[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Who here works at an ammo manufacturer? Let's compare notes!*Wolf, Rem, Win, etc--are you out there (Page 3 of 8)
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XM193 is really military rejects, packaged many different ways. It comes from Lake City in 35 gallon steel cannisters, packed loose, by semi. LC has already rejected it for military, and we go through and QC it again and put it into...whatever packaging it gets that day. We also put it on clips in 30 round boxes by the case. It gets dumped and re-dumped several times in 30.000 round lots and trucked around the floor and dropped into and out of steel hoppers, thus explaining some of the dings. What military is buying M193? This is an common point of contention when XM193 is discussed, do you have any answers to this? only what I have posted––somewhere along the line, LC makes M193 and federal gets the rejects, which are Xm193. We can only deduce that someone, somewhere is using M193. Soerry I can't do better than that. Someone from LC needs to hop on and fill us in. Quoted:
One thing I forgot about the .mil rounds––we make the SCAR load in 556 and 762, the bullets are made in house. All become SCAR rounds and are sent to various .mil and government agencies. the brown tipped training round (frangible and non toxic) is out sourced (bullet) and assembled in-house. What are these? Are these labeled as FN ammunition? Projectile type and weight? Here's a pic of one of the employee's 7.62 SCAR round boxes. Pretty special projectile and very effective. The material is "smart" and reacts differently depending on what it hits. Reports from the field have been very positive. 
Edited to add better picture of the SCAR/SOST rounds in 7.62x51; their dual cannelure design; the headstamp (NATO cross/FC/date); and the sealant (a loctite product called Permabond) that can be seen inside the cannelures, but especially the cannelure at the case mouth crimp (darker/purplish substance, hardened by IR/UV lamp). |
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XM193 is really military rejects, packaged many different ways. It comes from Lake City in 35 gallon steel cannisters, packed loose, by semi. LC has already rejected it for military, and we go through and QC it again and put it into...whatever packaging it gets that day. We also put it on clips in 30 round boxes by the case. It gets dumped and re-dumped several times in 30.000 round lots and trucked around the floor and dropped into and out of steel hoppers, thus explaining some of the dings. What military is buying M193? This is an common point of contention when XM193 is discussed, do you have any answers to this? only what I have posted––somewhere along the line, LC makes M193 and federal gets the rejects, which are Xm193. We can only deduce that someone, somewhere is using M193. Soerry I can't do better than that. Someone from LC needs to hop on and fill us in. Quoted:
One thing I forgot about the .mil rounds––we make the SCAR load in 556 and 762, the bullets are made in house. All become SCAR rounds and are sent to various .mil and government agencies. the brown tipped training round (frangible and non toxic) is out sourced (bullet) and assembled in-house. What are these? Are these labeled as FN ammunition? Projectile type and weight? Here's a pic of one of the employee's 7.62 SCAR round boxes. Pretty special projectile and very effective. The material is "smart" and reacts differently depending on what it hits. Reports from the field have been very positive. http://i46.tinypic.com/e6vqzm.jpg 130 grain, interesting. Smart bullets, like the old LeMas round that used to be peddled at gunshows 
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| Thanks for posting all this Chicken Daddy. My old man worked at Federal for almost 50 years. Retired a few years ago. My neighbors buddy works night shift there. I live about 25-30 minutes from the plant. Hmmph! Small world! I too would like to hear from someone else from another manufacturer. |
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Thanks for the info. What exactly would be cause for rejects? Surely they aren't going to be selling squibs or dangerous loads right? They could be rejected based on range of weight, case varnish on the exterior of the case, primer scratches (deep), non-visible annealing iris, no visible primer sealant, large dents, corrosion with "breadth and depth", mis-colored case, or it just plain looks ugly. MOST defects come from the neck and shoulder area––folds/fissures/oil dents. The manual is several dozen pages long that we grade by. Cool, thanks. When you find a defect, do you reject the rounds individually? Or by batches/lots? If the latter, how big are these batches/lots? |
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XM193 is really military rejects, packaged many different ways. It comes from Lake City in 35 gallon steel cannisters, packed loose, by semi. LC has already rejected it for military, and we go through and QC it again and put it into...whatever packaging it gets that day. We also put it on clips in 30 round boxes by the case. It gets dumped and re-dumped several times in 30.000 round lots and trucked around the floor and dropped into and out of steel hoppers, thus explaining some of the dings. What military is buying M193? This is an common point of contention when XM193 is discussed, do you have any answers to this? only what I have posted––somewhere along the line, LC makes M193 and federal gets the rejects, which are Xm193. We can only deduce that someone, somewhere is using M193. Soerry I can't do better than that. Someone from LC needs to hop on and fill us in. Quoted:
One thing I forgot about the .mil rounds––we make the SCAR load in 556 and 762, the bullets are made in house. All become SCAR rounds and are sent to various .mil and government agencies. the brown tipped training round (frangible and non toxic) is out sourced (bullet) and assembled in-house. What are these? Are these labeled as FN ammunition? Projectile type and weight? Here's a pic of one of the employee's 7.62 SCAR round boxes. Pretty special projectile and very effective. The material is "smart" and reacts differently depending on what it hits. Reports from the field have been very positive. http://i46.tinypic.com/e6vqzm.jpg Oooooo, when do we get to buy that??? |
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Quoted: Looks like a Barnes TSX bullet. Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: XM193 is really military rejects, packaged many different ways. It comes from Lake City in 35 gallon steel cannisters, packed loose, by semi. LC has already rejected it for military, and we go through and QC it again and put it into...whatever packaging it gets that day. We also put it on clips in 30 round boxes by the case. It gets dumped and re-dumped several times in 30.000 round lots and trucked around the floor and dropped into and out of steel hoppers, thus explaining some of the dings. What military is buying M193? This is an common point of contention when XM193 is discussed, do you have any answers to this? only what I have posted––somewhere along the line, LC makes M193 and federal gets the rejects, which are Xm193. We can only deduce that someone, somewhere is using M193. Soerry I can't do better than that. Someone from LC needs to hop on and fill us in. Quoted: One thing I forgot about the .mil rounds––we make the SCAR load in 556 and 762, the bullets are made in house. All become SCAR rounds and are sent to various .mil and government agencies. the brown tipped training round (frangible and non toxic) is out sourced (bullet) and assembled in-house. What are these? Are these labeled as FN ammunition? Projectile type and weight? Here's a pic of one of the employee's 7.62 SCAR round boxes. Pretty special projectile and very effective. The material is "smart" and reacts differently depending on what it hits. Reports from the field have been very positive. http://i46.tinypic.com/e6vqzm.jpg |
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The company I work for supplies ATK with all it's aluminum for Blazer ammo in Lewiston, ID. Visited their plant in Lewiston several years ago. Great bunch of guys. Took us jet boating on the Snake River. I've been trying to get freebies out of them for a long time. They come through every once in awhile.  I'd really like to tour Lewiston some day. Was it pretty modern? I've toured it. I can't say modern from antique, but it is an IMPRESSIVE facility. |
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Thanks for the info. What exactly would be cause for rejects? Surely they aren't going to be selling squibs or dangerous loads right? They could be rejected based on range of weight, case varnish on the exterior of the case, primer scratches (deep), non-visible annealing iris, no visible primer sealant, large dents, corrosion with "breadth and depth", mis-colored case, or it just plain looks ugly. MOST defects come from the neck and shoulder area––folds/fissures/oil dents. The manual is several dozen pages long that we grade by. any way we could find this manual somewhere online was also wondering about the deal with the 30 rounds of xm193 brown boxed on stripper clips and why you guys put them on there. are those just the only packaging available that day as well? thanks for sharing, this is definitely a cool thread. |
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Thanks for the info. What exactly would be cause for rejects? Surely they aren't going to be selling squibs or dangerous loads right? They could be rejected based on range of weight, case varnish on the exterior of the case, primer scratches (deep), non-visible annealing iris, no visible primer sealant, large dents, corrosion with "breadth and depth", mis-colored case, or it just plain looks ugly. MOST defects come from the neck and shoulder area––folds/fissures/oil dents. The manual is several dozen pages long that we grade by. Cool, thanks. When you find a defect, do you reject the rounds individually? Or by batches/lots? If the latter, how big are these batches/lots? Depends––at a certain percentage of defects, a whole lot can be rejected. As far as Xm193, so far, I have only seen that rejected per piece––even for how bad it sometimes looks, you'd be amazed at what will fit inside a 5.56 profile gauge. |
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Looks like a Barnes TSX bullet.
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XM193 is really military rejects, packaged many different ways. It comes from Lake City in 35 gallon steel cannisters, packed loose, by semi. LC has already rejected it for military, and we go through and QC it again and put it into...whatever packaging it gets that day. We also put it on clips in 30 round boxes by the case. It gets dumped and re-dumped several times in 30.000 round lots and trucked around the floor and dropped into and out of steel hoppers, thus explaining some of the dings. What military is buying M193? This is an common point of contention when XM193 is discussed, do you have any answers to this? only what I have posted––somewhere along the line, LC makes M193 and federal gets the rejects, which are Xm193. We can only deduce that someone, somewhere is using M193. Soerry I can't do better than that. Someone from LC needs to hop on and fill us in. Quoted:
One thing I forgot about the .mil rounds––we make the SCAR load in 556 and 762, the bullets are made in house. All become SCAR rounds and are sent to various .mil and government agencies. the brown tipped training round (frangible and non toxic) is out sourced (bullet) and assembled in-house. What are these? Are these labeled as FN ammunition? Projectile type and weight? Here's a pic of one of the employee's 7.62 SCAR round boxes. Pretty special projectile and very effective. The material is "smart" and reacts differently depending on what it hits. Reports from the field have been very positive. http://i46.tinypic.com/e6vqzm.jpg We have a very good relationship with Barnes. however, if I understand the head of the SCAR munitions program correctly, these are all made in house. In fact, I have seen them being produced and the grooves or cannelures being cut with my very eyes. The munition is not entirely solid, it is powdered––that's how it's "smart"––just the mechanics of physics. Too bad I'm not an engineer so I could explain it better. |
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The company I work for supplies ATK with all it's aluminum for Blazer ammo in Lewiston, ID. Visited their plant in Lewiston several years ago. Great bunch of guys. Took us jet boating on the Snake River. I've been trying to get freebies out of them for a long time. They come through every once in awhile. I'd really like to tour Lewiston some day. Was it pretty modern? I've toured it. I can't say modern from antique, but it is an IMPRESSIVE facility. Our machinery is fairly old, almost all painted green. We have a few newer machines thrown into the mix. Some captured german stufff rom WW2. I see the Manhurin name frequently. We are getting 10 million worth of new machinery this year (LC is getting 120 million's worth––you should see their new 50BMG lines. Impressive). One of the premium large rifle packers is a Bosch food packaging machine that was converted to pack large rifle cartridges. |
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Thanks for the info. What exactly would be cause for rejects? Surely they aren't going to be selling squibs or dangerous loads right? They could be rejected based on range of weight, case varnish on the exterior of the case, primer scratches (deep), non-visible annealing iris, no visible primer sealant, large dents, corrosion with "breadth and depth", mis-colored case, or it just plain looks ugly. MOST defects come from the neck and shoulder area––folds/fissures/oil dents. The manual is several dozen pages long that we grade by. any way we could find this manual somewhere online It's directly from the .mil, and old as the hills, so I'm not sure. was also wondering about the deal with the 30 rounds of xm193 brown boxed on stripper clips and why you guys put them on there. Each case also comes with three spoons, so I suppose it's for speedy loading of magazines. The clips are made in Israel. are those just the only packaging available that day as well? No, the clipper is a dedicated area that runs almost every day.thanks for sharing, this is definitely a cool thread. |
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Quoted: 9mm luger 147 grain. Jacketed Hollow point. XM9HAQuoted: Please Please tell me all you can about Federal XM9HA. Thanks, Josh Our catalog is huge, tell me what the packaging says... It appears to use the 147gr HST bullet yet is not in a HST box( It's grayish and black) The scanning barcode says 29465 09843 |
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Please Please tell me all you can about Federal XM9HA. Thanks, Josh Our catalog is huge, tell me what the packaging says... This is probably why he is(and I was going to be) asking. http://www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=5&f=20&t=88276 |
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9mm luger 147 grain. Jacketed Hollow point. XM9HA
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Please Please tell me all you can about Federal XM9HA. Thanks, Josh Our catalog is huge, tell me what the packaging says... It appears to use the 147gr HST bullet yet is not in a HST box( It's grayish and black) The scanning barcode says 29465 09843 You know more than me on that one––one of the other guys was packing it. Looks like good stuff, and I never see it in the employee store, so it had very few defects. |
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Any anti-gun people working there? How do they act about making munitions? There are a few Obama stickers on cars. Most folks who voted Obama who work there are fairly quiet about it (rightly so, don't you think)? Although our business this year is due in part to Obama. Most people who work there that are not gun people do their jobs––just like if you didn't smoke and worked at a cigarette factory, I suppose. however, some aspects really are not done as well as could be done by "gunnies". That's my opinion. Several folks don't even own guns. BUT there are a good amount of pro-gun people, as well. lots of Fudds/hunters. |
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Cool thread , thanks.
Never been in the ammo biz, but I worked in a zinc penny, copper coating , rolling mill. Dirty , but impressive , all at the same time. Jet powered furnace molten zinc, to rolls of sheets to go through the presses, or out the door as coils, Big fuckin rolling machines, at least to my untrained eye back then, not sure what the norm is now. Neat experience for me , anyway. yeah,I have seen many penny blanks pass through, if there was a break down, we had penny wars. They can curve just right if you know how to zing them. Yeah , the place was smelly with machine oil, cooling fluid, cyanide and shit for the plating line, and old dust when a forktruck hit an I beam. . Never seen so much copper coils that we chopped into nuggets for the plating line. Fun time back then, young and dumb. The ld mill is closed I hear, . Going to google it, see what it says. Sorry so off topic. |
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XM193 is really military rejects, packaged many different ways. It comes from Lake City in 35 gallon steel cannisters, packed loose, by semi. LC has already rejected it for military, and we go through and QC it again and put it into...whatever packaging it gets that day. We also put it on clips in 30 round boxes by the case. It gets dumped and re-dumped several times in 30.000 round lots and trucked around the floor and dropped into and out of steel hoppers, thus explaining some of the dings. What military is buying M193? This is an common point of contention when XM193 is discussed, do you have any answers to this? only what I have posted––somewhere along the line, LC makes M193 and federal gets the rejects, which are Xm193. We can only deduce that someone, somewhere is using M193. Soerry I can't do better than that. Someone from LC needs to hop on and fill us in. Quoted:
One thing I forgot about the .mil rounds––we make the SCAR load in 556 and 762, the bullets are made in house. All become SCAR rounds and are sent to various .mil and government agencies. the brown tipped training round (frangible and non toxic) is out sourced (bullet) and assembled in-house. What are these? Are these labeled as FN ammunition? Projectile type and weight? Here's a pic of one of the employee's 7.62 SCAR round boxes. Pretty special projectile and very effective. The material is "smart" and reacts differently depending on what it hits. Reports from the field have been very positive. http://i46.tinypic.com/e6vqzm.jpg 130 grain, interesting. Smart bullets, like the old LeMas round that used to be peddled at gunshows http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2009infantrysmallarms/tuesdaysessioniii8524.pdf....page 16-25 |
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Quoted: So when you run out of XM193 sleeves, you package 5.56mm into boxes marked .223? Is this why the 100 value packs sometimes have LC brass?Quoted: Are the XM193 rejects merely "cosmetic" like I've heard or might they be less reliable? See previous post. None of the "shooter" people at federal buy it, because we would have to pay retail (no seconds on military or XM loads). we get good enough deals on the high end stuff and AE (which is sometimes Xm193, we just ran out of XM193 sleeves and had to put it into AE sleeves that day), so we buy that. |
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Quoted: We have a very good relationship with Barnes. however, if I understand the head of the SCAR munitions program correctly, these are all made in house. In fact, I have seen them being produced and the grooves or cannelures being cut with my very eyes. The munition is not entirely solid, it is powdered––that's how it's "smart"––just the mechanics of physics. Too bad I'm not an engineer so I could explain it better. Ok, I found it. http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2009infantrysmallarms/tuesdaysessioniii8524.pdf. It's made of half copper and half lead powder or lead-free substitute. |
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I will prolly get flamed for low post count but I work at Speer in ATK's Lewiston plant as a centerfire metal parts setup. I setup and run machines that make 380, 9 40 and 45 in speer, cci, blazer brass, and federal.
We do have a company store and I am barely allowed to buy what I shoot in a week every thursday. Lewiston plants (speer, cci, southport) are running 24/7. We are expanding RAPIDLY. Adding many new machines here in a couple months and have lots of extra people ready so they are all still properly manned. Shoot any questions...I've only been there since June but my father has been there since 1978. |